How to Publish an eBook Part 3. Writing It.

How to Publish an eBook Part 3. Writing It.

You can write your own eBook and publish your eBook on Amazon and make money from it. The hardest part is writing the eBook.

How to write the actual book. The hardest part is the writing of the book.

There are different approaches to Fiction and Non-fiction books.

This is the NON-FICTION guide.

Here are some guidelines to help you get started.

Begin with an open text document or piece of paper.

Write at least 5 different ideas down for your book, one sentence at a time. These are your “Idea Sentences.”

Use your Idea sentence as a subheading and write a few notes about each idea. Idea 1 etc

Write a couple of words about who would need this information, (your target customer.)

How long, (how many words.)

What price will you want to charge for each book?

Your Beautiful Ideas

Idea 1

Notes: Where When What Which How Why

Customer profile: (Your target customer.)

How long will the eBook be?

What Price will you charge?

Idea 2

Notes: Where When What Which How Why

Etc.

This will give you an idea of what to write about and how long it will take you.

It will also help you to see if your idea is a good one and that you can write about it.

Some ideas feel good before you analyse them and then prove difficult to explain or feel “wrong” when you read them back. If your gut feeling is that an idea seems clumsy or complicated, then ditch it. You will have plenty more.

The Research

Take the idea(s) that have survived and google the title of your idea. You can use Bing or any search engine you have access to.

Make a note of any good content ideas. WARNING! Do not cut and paste. Google picks up plagiarism and you may find your web-site black listed at worst or ignored at best.

With your added notes, go back to your sub-headings and see if there is anything YOU think should be added or amended. Not all content is good and if you think what someone else has written is unsuitable, do not use it. You are writing your own articles.

Revised Edition

You should now have

a title

an introduction

sub-headings

a conclusion or summing up

This is the skeleton of your book and you can now begin writing the detail inside your framework (skeleton.)

Some Tips About The Content of Your Book:

Use sub-headings and expand on each sub-heading. (No one wants to read an unstructured or rambling piece of writing.)

Keep a clear idea in your mind of who your “target Customer” is.

What level of knowledge are you assuming they already have?

What will they have learned after reading your book?

Leave editing and spelling/grammar corrections to the end.

Read what you have written after every page. Correct grammar and spelling but leave major formatting, like colour and font sizes until your final draft. Keep it simple.

Graphics, Illustrations and Pictures

A picture tells a thousand words.

Visuals or graphics should be:

Explanatory. They must have some value that adds to the text or highlights something.

Relevant to the text

Attractive, rough or hand drawn pictures are rarely good enough.

Titled, a picture is meaningless unless it has a title which links to the text.

Breaking up the lines of words with some visual representation is a good idea. It makes the whole book more readable and attractive.

The Cover

You may have some ideas about this. It is a good idea to shop around if you want someone else to do it for you. You might want to try Fivver where you can get a few test covers done by professionals and pick and use the best one. This will cost you a little but should not exceed £30.

A good cover can sell an eBook just as much as a physical one.

The Final Run

Having completed your book, go to bed, take a break or watch TV and come back and read your book from fresh the next day.

You may find it good to get someone you know to read it and give you some feedback. Remember all feedback is useful. We get deeply involved in projects like these and cannot always see mistakes, repeats or incomplete passages as well as an independent pair of eyes.

Final Note

There will always be parts you feel could be better and it is unlikely you will ever end up with exactly what you thought you would in the beginning.

Go back to your framework and ask yourself if the book makes sense and if it definitely carries your reader to a different part of their life. Does it add value?

Sometimes you have to pat yourself on the back because to get this far is a major achievement. Most people never get to this point.

No article can be exhaustive and 100% perfect. If you are here with a completed book: congratulations and well done.